Rand Paul's early state mojo

“Rand Paul could turn into five feet, eight inches and 140 pounds of early-state mojo,” said Dave Kochel, who was Mitt Romney’s top adviser in Iowa last cycle. “He’s got the uber-activists of his father’s organization in Iowa, where even a small base can be very potent. His ability to mainstream the liberty message is a good fit for New Hampshire, where voters are less interested in social issues and more interested in keeping government off their backs, and his southern drawl and Kentucky pedigree means he’ll sound like a neighbor in South Carolina.”

Kochel continued: “The only question will be whether he can grow a base outside of the liberty movement. We know he can capture national attention from a big moment like the filibuster, the question will be whether or not he can hold it over the longer term and start looking like a winner.”

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Jim Merrill, Romney’s senior strategist in New Hampshire, agreed that at this “ridiculously early” stage, Paul “comes in with a couple advantages.”

“His father put together a very impressive organization here, a lot of activists,” Merrill said. “We have a funny, interesting blend of conservatism and libertarianism in the party right now. There’s a very strong strain of that here [in New Hampshire].”

In private conversations, Rand Paul advisers envision taking the Ron Paul base and broadening it to include Iowans who supported Christian conservatives like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, and Granite Staters who inclined toward the pugilistic Newt Gingrich. And then, for good measure, throwing in a batch of younger voters who may participate in primaries for the first time because of his explicit overtures to the next generation.

“Between evangelicals and, I would say, even a certain percentage of more established Republican types – what some consider establishment Republicans – they definitely would be more open to Rand than they might have been to his dad,” said Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker, who supported the elder Paul in 2012.

Hampton Mayor Shawn Dietz, who supported Ron Paul last cycle, said at the Lincoln Dinner that Rand’s task will be courting the disparate wings of the party without undermining his unique activist following.

“I think he needs to have a unifying message. There are strong beliefs on a couple different sides of the GOP right now,” Dietz said.

For Paul, it may be that the only path to the GOP presidential nomination involves racking up big victories in the early states and becoming, in effect, a political runaway train that cannot be easily derailed by establishment money.